


Guilty Until Proven Innocent

by NoisyNoiverns



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Gen, Spitefic, Twilight Spitefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 16:56:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoisyNoiverns/pseuds/NoisyNoiverns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bella is taken to court for unclear charges. But the judge is a former angel, the prosecution is a demon, and the defense is nonexistent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilty Until Proven Innocent

**Author's Note:**

> edit: dont read this its old i can do better i swear

I opened my eyes to total blackness.

The floor was hard and cold, but rough, like rock. The air was damp and mildewy, and I could hear water dripping somewhere a few feet away.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" I asked, looking around. Only my voice echoed back to me in response. I was alone.

"Ha ha, very funny, Edward." I forced a laugh. "You got me. Come on out."

Once again, there was no answer.

"Come on, Edward, this isn't funny anymore!"

This time, I got an answer, but not the one I was expecting.

A door opened, shedding light on my surroundings. I was right about the rock- the room was hewn from rough, sparkling red stone, dotted here and there with pale moss and puddles of water. The door looked several inches thick, with an iron handle and deadbolt. Standing in the doorway was a tall man holding a lantern. His hair was light brown, his skin unnaturally pale, and his eyes an odd shade of hazel. A big black dog stood next to him. I was shocked to see that the dog had no pupils, just twin expanses of icy gray.

"Isabella Marie Swan?"

"Cullen. I'm married. It's Isabella Marie Cullen." I frowned. Shouldn't he know that?

The man sighed, and he talked to me like I was a small child. "Swan was the surname given to you at birth. Matrimony has no sway here."

How odd. But it wasn't important right now. "Do you know where Edward is?" I stood up and reached for him. Surely he had to know where Edward was.

He blinked slowly at me, then shrugged. "I do not have orders concerning your mate. My superior will know."

"Who's your superior? Take me to him," I demanded, frowning at him. I took a step toward him, but the dog barked loudly at me, and I stepped back warily.

He shook his head and smiled thinly. "I cannot do that. We have rules here. It is against regulation."

There was 'here' again, without an explanation. "Where is here?"

He tilted his head, and it was so reminiscent of Jacob I felt a pang of longing. "Your current location is Cell Delta, Block Gamma, Prison Omicron in region Avaritia of Hell. My name is Kelemen Czinege, and I have been assigned to handle your case until such time as the Lord Mammon is able to decide your fate."

I gaped at him. "What do you mean, prison?"

Kelemen gave me another slow, mechanical blink. "Ms. Swan, you have been charged with vanity and an overwhelming greed for that which has been proven you should not have. A bounty was placed on your head, and you were duly collected and brought here for judgement. Several high-ranking demons and fallen angels have brought forward evidence against you. Eyewitness testimonies, video, the like. We're very thorough in our monitoring of the human world for both potential contractees and sinners, Ms. Swan. I understand both the prosecution and the judge are quite eager for the trial."

I frowned. "I want a lawyer."

He frowned back at me, cracking his apparently emotionless face. "Ms. Swan, I believe I just told you. You are in Hell. You do not get a lawyer. Now, please cease this pointless questioning. It is time for the trial, and I have never once been late."

I opened my mouth to protest, but he waved a hand towards me, and the dog entered the room, circling around me to my back. To my surprise, its eyes glowed brightly in the dark, two shining dots in the relative darkness. It got behind me and headbutted me, leaving me no choice but to follow my jailer as he left the doorway and walked off.

Kelemen and the dog led me through a maze of hallways lined with thick metal doors, not stopping or answering any of my attempts to talk to them until we reached a large set of wooden doors engraved with wolves and inlaid with precious metals and gemstones. Again I found myself missing Jacob. Kelemen spun on his heel to face me, folding his arms across his chest. "Beyond these doors is the high court of Hell. You are expected to provide your own defense against any and all accusations, however futile it may be. Do not attempt to bribe anyone. A telepath is stationed inside. We will know if you lie or otherwise break the aforementioned rules. Do you agree to these conditions?"

"Yes, fine, whatever." I smirked inwardly. If Edward couldn't read my mind, no demon would be able to, either.

"Good. When you enter, please take a seat at the table on your right." He turned away again and pushed open the doors.

I gasped when I saw the room, following Kelemen down an aisle of intricately-carved stone pews. The walls were gorgeously hewn from the same rough rock as my cell had been, but these were smoother, and painted with beautiful murals. The one directly across from me caught my eye first: a beautiful, silver-furred wolf, with honey-gold eyes and pupils like splinters of obsidian, stood on guard behind the judge's bench, staring directly at me. A set of golden scales loomed behind it, and more wolves chased after an elk in the background. As I moved away from the aisle, it looked like the wolf's gaze followed me. It was almost accusing, and I suddenly remembered Leah Clearwater. Had she set me up for this?

As I turned to look around, I gasped. Upon closer inspection, the murals on the other walls weren't nearly as placid as the one on the wall in front of me. The sides of the room depicted horrible battles in graphic detail, complete with decapitations and disembowelments. But the wall facing the bench was worse- instead of gory pictures of violence, it was a simple dark blue background with a gleaming guillotine painted over the doorway.

I swallowed and turned back to the front just as a clacking on the floor alerted me to another person approaching. I looked to the aisle and saw a gorgeous woman moving to take a seat at the other table. I assumed she was the prosecution. She sat down and stared straight ahead. Or, I assumed so. It was hard to tell with the blindfold over her eyes.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kelemen and his dog moving to the side of the bench and turned as he spoke. "All rise for Lord Mammon."

As I stood, I heard a rustling behind me. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed that every seat in the pews had been taken, and I stifled a gasp. How had they gotten there so quietly?

I looked back to the front to see a short, gaunt-faced yet somehow still pudgy around the midsection man entering the room. His long, black judge's robes draped over his body in all the wrong places, enunciating his odd build. His ebony hair was matted, like he repeatedly slept on it wrong and never bothered to fix it, and his skin was nearly translucent, webbed through with purple blood vessels. He clearly never left the realm to get any sun.

As he took the bench, he waved a hand at the blindfolded woman. "Morning, Honorine. How's that Fallen cooperating?" His voice was a deep, horrible rasp, like he had had a few too many cigarettes in his lifetime.

The woman's mouth furrowed into a scowl. "Not at all, sir. But don't worry. I'll get him to talk eventually." She spoke with a heavy accent, probably French.

"Good." The judge sighed as he took a seat and Kelemen announced, "The court is now in session, the honorable Lord Mammon presiding. Please be seated and come to order."

As everyone sat, Mammon tapped his knuckles on the rock surface before him. "Let's make this quick, everyone. Belphegor challenged me to a round in _Battlefield_. Ms. Reyer, as we have no defense, as usual, you may begin."

As the blindfolded woman opened her mouth, I cried, "What do you mean, no defense? Don't I get to defend myself?"

Mammon turned his head stiffly to look down at me. He raised an eyebrow, then drawled, "Short answer? No. Long answer? Welcome to Hell, where the laws are made up and the pleas of innocence don't matter. Proceed, Ms. Reyer."

The woman spoke before I could protest, her accented voice ringing out through the room. "The prosecution calls Isabella Swan to the stand."

"It's Bella," I told her as I went to the stand.

Even though I couldn't see her eyes, I could feel them rolling through her tone. "Just take the oath, Madame."

I did so, and she wasted no time. "Madame Swan, is it true that upon learning that the object of your infatuation was a vampire, you wanted to be one, too?"

I scowled. "Of course not. It didn't matter."

The prosecutor tilted her head as chatter in some foreign language burst from above. It sounded vaguely Russian, but also possibly German or Hebrew. She listened for a moment, then nodded and stepped closer to the stand. "And is it true that before this event occured, he had repeatedly shown hostility towards you?"

I blinked at her. "Yes, but-"

"So please, Madame, tell the court why you claim to have loved him at such an early point in your relationship, even though he had previously been openly hostile."

I furrowed my brow. "Well, he was very beautiful, and rich, and..." I trailed off. There had to be something else.

"I see. So, you liked him for his money and looks, then?"

"Um, well... Yes, I suppose so."

The mouth below the blindfold quirked upward in a smirk. "I see. And is it true that approximately six months into your relationship, Monsieur Cullen dumped you in the woods?"

I felt a sharp pang in my chest. "Y-yes, it is..."

The smirk grew into a sharklike grin. "How would you describe your emotional state while he was gone?"

I bit my lip. "Um, well, I don't really remember much... I guess I was going on autopilot."

"So, in a word or two, near catatonic."

"Yes, that sounds about right."

"I see. And what would you say was the most upsetting thing about his absence?"

I pursed my lips. "I'd rather not talk about this anymore."

The prosecutor sighed. "Your Honor?"

"Answer the question, Ms. Swan," came the bored rasp. It sounded muffled, and when I looked at him, I could see why. Mammon had placed his head face-down on his arms, only his veiny ears sticking out from under the rat's nest of hair atop his head.

I frowned. "You're not even paying attention!"

There was no response for a moment, then Mammon very slowly lifted his head and gazed at me with bloodshot, sunken-in eyes. "I've already decided your fate, Ms. Swan. This trial is simply to help me to decide the method. At the moment, I am leaning heavily towards letting the hounds use you as a chew toy." I stiffened, and he continued, "Now answer the question, you impertinent little mealworm, before I decide to do away with all this and just kill you myself." He smiled at me, peeling his cracked lips back over yellowed, needle-like teeth with dark red stains on the tips. "And I'd really rather not do that. Your attitude might give me indigestion."

I shuddered and swallowed the lump in my throat that had been growing since the blindfolded woman brought it up. "I wasn't going to be with him forever."

"And what do you mean by forever?" The blindfolded woman was back in control, her manic grin replaced with an expression of total calm.

I swallowed. "I wanted him to turn me into a vampire, so I could be beautiful and immortal and stay with him for eternity."

"Eternity?"

"Eternity. Don't you know what that means?"

The horrid rasp came from above me again. "Eternity, noun. Infinite or unending time, a state to which time has no application, timelessness." I looked up to see Mammon leaning towards me, his lips peeled back in that awful sneer again. "I fell from Grace with Lucifer himself, child, before humanity was even a blip on the planetary ecosystem's radar. You have no idea the price immortality brings."

I shuddered as he sat back and said, "Continue your questioning, Ms. Reyer. And make it quick. I'm getting bored."

The blindfolded woman nodded sharply. "So, Madame, you admit that you wanted to be frozen in time as you were at the moment you learned of his vampirism?"

"Yes. I thought if I wasn't beautiful, he wouldn't want me."

A wrinkle appeared in her brow, like an eyebrow had risen beneath her blindfold. "You do realize, of course, that sounds tremendously shallow?"

"What do you know about being shallow? You're a demon." I felt my shoulders tense up, ready to strike. How dare she call me shallow? I wasn't like the girls at school.

To my surprise, the room erupted in angry snarls, and the prosecutor calmly said, "Few of us are so shallow as to throw away everything we know for a chance at eternal life, Madame. Those that are, and even some that aren't, already live forever."

I scowled. "I wasn't throwing everything away. I had a new family waiting for me."

"So you would willingly give up your human friends, any dreams you had, even your own parents," she paused to wait for the outraged grumbling to die down, who knew demons were so familial? "-all so you could be pretty until the end of days?"

I fidgeted. "Well, when you put it that way..."

"And this 'new family' you speak of, they are obscenely wealthy, is that correct?"

"Well, I wouldn't say _obscenely_..."

The prosecutor sighed and tilted her head upwards. "Which of you has the figures?"

I looked up in time to see a lithe figure plummet downwards, landing in a neat little crouch and standing up in one fluid motion. Up close, I couldn't tell if it was male or female- it had no curves to speak of, but a very feminine face and hands. Its inky black hair was cropped close to its head, and both ears as well as its nose, lip, and eyebrows were pierced. It was dressed in baggy black clothing, with a leather jacket, matching boots, and a studded dog collar around its neck to complete the image. It was holding a file folder, which it tapped on the stand before saying in a voice that was somewhere between an alto and a baritone, "Here's the whole file, Honorine."

A faint smile appeared below the blindfold. " _Merci_ , Monsieur Abaddon. Read the list of offenses, please."

The thing nodded and opened the file, squinting at the papers inside before clearing its throat and reading, "Multiple luxury cars, most purchased before their release. Black credit cards. Playing the stock market. Several original artworks by masters of their field, rarely taken care of properly. Luxurious homes, none of which ever change hands and sit vacant rather than being rented or sold when their owners have no current need of them. Designer clothes, most worn once and tossed out. Tons of food bought but never eaten, assumed to be thrown away. Valuable items collected and left to gather dust." It looked up and sneered at me, lip curling back over crooked teeth. "Maybe my dumb ox of a brother should pay your 'family' a visit. If they're so rich, they won't mind how much he'll inevitably destroy."

I pressed back against the back of the chair as it went on, "And please, I am not an 'it' or a 'thing.' My name is Abaddon, and I am a male demon. I would appreciate it if you would think of me as one."

It took a moment for me to process his words, and when I did, I felt a chill creep up my spine. It heard my thoughts. But how could it, when Edward couldn't?

Before I could speak, the prosecutor stepped in. "Thank you, Monsieur. That will be all, for now."

The thing nodded and took a seat at the prosecutor's table, leaning back in its chair as the blindfolded woman went on, "That sounded like quite a lot of waste to me, Madame."

It took a moment to find my words, then I stammered, "Well, they've got so much money, why shouldn't they spend it? And half of it they do so they seem human!"

"Monsieur Abaddon, do your records show evidence of visitors?"

The thing flipped through the papers in front of it, then shook its head. "Subjects rarely entertain guests. On the occasions where they do, guests are of their own species. Humans rarely, if ever, get close enough to the subjects to determine any details about them, with one obvious exception." Its eyes flicked to me, and I flinched away from its amber gaze. "By the way, she's doing it again. I'm a he, not an it. Let the record show that the vampire Isabella Marie Swan is a rude, disrespectful, misgendering little cunt."

I heard a long-suffering sigh from above me, and Mammon said, "Strike that last word. Boss hates it when vulgarity slips into the records, no matter how justified it is. Go on, Honorine."

The prosecutor huffed. "Thank you, sir." She turned her face back towards me. "You heard what he said, Madame. If humans never see your family or their home, what is the purpose of the food and other things they buy but never use?"

"Well..." I faltered. What was I supposed to say?

The woman bulldozed right through. "Answer: there is none. They do it to flaunt their wealth. Such behavior is quite fitting for demons who rarely walk the earth, but not at all for vampires attempting to pass themselves off as human. So, Madame, please tell us. If their wealth had no importance to you, why did you allow them to shower you with such pricey things?"

My voice caught in my throat. What was I supposed to say?

The woman waited, then turned her back to me, facing the crowd. "Just as I thought. Ladies and gentlemen, many of you have already been briefed on the actions of the Northeastern Pacific coven of sparkling vampires. On request from several covens of the older style of vampires, they will be systematically eliminated, beginning after the current case is concluded."

I could only gape in horror as she continued, "You have all heard the testimony given to us by this despicable sentient slime heap. All that remains is the method of execution."

The audience erupted in a clamor of voices, each one screaming a different solution. Next to me, I heard Mammon sigh and mumble something in what sounded distinctly like German before he stood up so quickly his chair was knocked over backwards, slammed his hands onto the bench in front of him, and roared, " _Quiet!_ "

The room went silent as the grave in seconds, and Mammon snorted. "Thank you." He picked up his chair and settled back down, then leaned forward, steepling his fingers. "Based on her actions in court today, I think I know just what we should do." His lips quirked up in a cruel smirk as he went on, "Ms. Reyer, I hope you'll find the new guillotine to your liking. Twice the grandeur as the last one, I should think. The blade is the highest-quality metals we could dredge up, and the scaffolding is some of the most pristine marble available. It should make short work of anyone you ask it to."

While the blindfolded woman clapped, a giddy smile spreading across her face, the genderless figure stood, palms on the table. "I want her head." It peeled back its lips in a horrifying grimace. "I should kill her myself for half of her offenses today, but I should think this bitch is a fitting first victim for the new guillotine. The least I deserve is her head mounted on my wall."

Mammon sighed and nodded. "You can have it, Abaddon." He looked past me and motioned to Kelemen. "Mr. Czinege, please escort Ms. Swan to the arena. I'll send word for them to set up the guillotine. The rest of you can get back to work. Or don't. I don't care."

As everyone got up to leave, more than half of them looking hungrily at me, I swallowed as I realized that this time around, Edward wasn't coming to save me, if he was still alive.

I was going to die. And this time, I wouldn't be rescued.

**Author's Note:**

> This took way longer to finish than it should have, and I was even cutting out the filler bits. But Bella getting what's coming to her, wheeee!
> 
> I tried my hand at semi-Meyerstyle and failed horribly. Meyerstyle isn't good for courtroom stuff.
> 
> edit: i see you ignored the first note.... i warned you


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